War and peace

October 08, 2002

Speaking from Cincinnati on Monday night was President George W. Bush's symbolic way of taking his case against Iraq beyond corridors of power and directly to the American people. What matters now, though, is what effect his strong words will have inside the corridors of power--at the U.S. Capitol, the United Nations and the presidential palaces of Baghdad.

Bush's speech could not, and will not, convince those who wholeheartedly oppose a war to change their minds. This remains a nation deeply divided. But by synthesizing his arguments against Saddam Hussein, Bush probably has raised the margins by which both houses of Congress will give him the authority to take military action. His arguments were sharper than in the past, including his assertion that "the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place."

Those congressional votes will come within days, with senators and representatives likelier to back the president than they were even four weeks ago. The movement of more Democrats toward a war resolution says less about uniform agreement with Bush than about their tacit admission that he has effectively used the threat of U.S. action against Iraq to pressure the international community. In his Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations, Bush listed the many UN resolutions that Iraq has flouted, and gave the members of its Security Council a simple choice: They could enforce the resolutions, or they could do nothing and prove the UN irrelevant.

It is still not clear that the UN will go to the mat for unrestricted weapons inspections in Iraq. What is clear is that, for lack of prior U.S. willingness to disarm Saddam, the UN has long been content to ignore its own demands of him. As U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal in support of a war authorization: "For more than a decade we have tried everything--diplomacy, sanctions, inspections, limited military action--except war to convince Saddam to keep the promises he made, and the UN endorsed, to end the Gulf War. Those steps have not worked."

Bush reiterated Monday night that he wants to avoid a new war. That is a goal the Tribune shares--and yet one paradoxically advanced by American resolve to wage a war if that becomes necessary. It's as regrettable as it is unarguable that the only hope for the UN to end its decade of dithering lies with the threat of U.S. action.

The president's speech furthers a pattern of doing much of what his critics spent the summer demanding that he do before launching a war. He has initiated a national debate, he has argued his case at the UN and given that body time to act, he has asked Congress to authorize military action rather than relying solely on his power as chief executive, and on Monday night he took his case to the American people. Inaction in the face of threat, he said, is "the riskiest of all options."

After the Cincinnati speech, it's clear where the principals stand. Bush soon will have the authority to launch a war. And Saddam, who by contrast has done little that his critics have demanded of him, has full power to prevent one.